Snow Angel
by BellonaBellatrix
Summary: Hermione is left searching for Harry. Her methods become her ruin...a short oneshot. TRHG


Disclaimer: I still do not own. It's all J.K. Rowling's.

Author notes: I just felt like writing a Tom/Hermione one-shot.

Snow Angel

x-x-x

It wasn't supposed to happen.

She wasn't supposed to be here, digging through the old annuals of the Dark Arts under the Malfoy's dining room floor, searching for something with a tough texture and waiting for her fingers to come back ink stained.

The dining room was no longer a room, caved in when the Manor fell in the war. Rotted and smoldering.

The items Ron Weasley so longed to expose were forgotten, a brief memory of what they thought War was. Yet she was among them, on her hands and knees. For you see, Hermione Granger had an obsession. It had haunted her in her dreams. It was behind her eyes during the day, scratchy and palpable.

The last battle was more like an Unspeakable Tale told to frighten children when the tellers know no such thing could actually be possible. A legend without a basis.

It wasn't supposed to happen but it did.

Harry Potter had disappeared. Taken when weakened beyond endurance, spirited away. She had not been there, by his side. She blamed the mass of white masks and confusion, that palpable panic that spreads to every person in a real battle. Inside she blames weakness.

Every night in her dreams Harry is screaming. He would not die easily. No, rather…she wondered if the Dark Lord would let him go.

She dug waiting for venom to burn her fingertips. She had to find it. You see…to find Harry. It was the key. Words were the key. His words were the key.

Her hands were black.

On the spine of the diary, it is silver. Right down the middle is the key.

T.M. Riddle

In her hurry, she had noticed it had begun to snow outside the blurry windows that held the Malfoy Crest. The light burned through the window.

In the light, snakes were in the snow.

x-x-x

She is in the library.

In the Restricted Section.

There isn't any point. There is no one left for it to be restricted from. She keeps the rope around the entry, lifting it up reverently. She keeps the curses and hexes on the books of dubious titles, careful to perform them again and again. She finds it keeps her from screaming.

Rather she pours the potions on the unholy thing full of holes. Rather she repeats the incantation over and over again.

And wonders if she is just imagining the cursive hand that bleeds through the grainy parchment.

x-x-x

Luna eyes the book close to her heart.

She can see her reflection clearly in those eyes and at the same does not recognize herself. They are mirror images of spectrums and stand across the threshold facing each other. Luna keeps her hand on the doorway. Snow gathers in the darkened stones.

"That meant something to Ginny," she said airily. "It was her thoughts."

"At one time," Hermione answers, rueful of this fact. "Change the password. Don't let me hear it."

Luna smiles. She seems to be memorizing her face in detail.

"I already have."

The Great Doors of the once Great Hogwarts closed and she hears the locks clamp shut.

x-x-x

His voice is beginning to echo in her head even when she doesn't write.

She asks and he never answers.

"Where would He take Harry?" she asks. "Tell me. If you don't, I will rip this book apart, right down the spine. You'll be scattered out all across Britain. Tell me."

"Are you doing this for him or for yourself?"

This question always intrigues him. She never understands it. He tells her things she does not wish to know.

"You are afraid. I can feel it."

Liar, she whispers at night when he comes to her. Liar.

She accuses him and he laughs.

"We are the same," she once said, thinking out loud on a particularly cold night. "We both sought out knowledge. Yet you ruined yourself. You tainted everything you touched."

She thinks she won. He grins and wrapped his hand deeper around her heart.

"You were desperate and afraid," he hissed in her mind. "You had to prove yourself. Knowledge is not what you sought. You are the one in ruins."

Liar.

It is winter and there are two sets of footprints in the snow now, of the hare and the wolf.

There is blood in the snow.

x-x-x

She keeps him alive and he begins to hate her.

He would rather die than have her dirty blood taint him.

It has become her weapon, the only thing she looks forward to. She pricks her finger and lets her blood stain into the grains of the paper. She smears it and smiles. It is her ink.

He hates her. She hates him.

She writes with her fingertip.

Tell me where he is.

x-x-x

That night he comes to her.

In the snow.

She sits in the chair in the abandoned Muggle home waiting for him. She feels him in the back of her mind. When he is gone, it feels wrong, empty.

A month has passed. Harry is still screaming.

He stands in the doorway, shivering from the feeling of the cold, not from the cold itself.

Snow is melting in his hair. Ice clings to his eyelashes.

She has drawn him out like she has drawn her own blood.

His lips are blue.

She finds they are cold. From the snow.

x-x-x

She tells him she knows what he is afraid of.

She can not stand alone now.

He is always in her wake. When they see each other, they see themselves. She recognizes his face more than she does her own. In his eyes, she can not see her reflection. She drowns.

They balance, waiting. Waiting for the other to slip.

She is tired. She is running out of ink.

He is no longer afraid.

Her lips are seared with his name.

x-x-x

He wraps himself around her, keeping her warm.

She wonders if he is doing it more for himself. Serpents need warmth to live. She needed warmth to sleep.

She breathes into his chest. His skin feels like a fine paper, not unlike the type that she felt with her fingertips. She murmurs the question that never has an answer.

Where is he…

…When he does answer, his voice is Nightshade.

She is afraid…

…Of herself.

She had forgotten why she wanted to know the answer.

She slips.

x-x-x

His whispers burn her ears.

"It was for you."

She can not remember.

His hands run through her hair. She wonders how his fingers never get tangled.

Hers do. She wishes she had his hands.

"And my blood."

She wants to sleep.

x-x-x

He takes her to that place that she sought.

He lays her in the snow.

She looks at the castle where the Boy she sought might still be. He is quiet now. She would go to him…if she could move.

She reaches out and misses the ledge by inches.

She wishes she had gloves. Her hands were cold.

She reaches for him. She buries her face in his robes. The old Prefect badge imprinted itself against her cheek. The metal burns a serpent unto her. She doesn't notice.

She clings to him. He rubs a circle into her back.

"Hermione."

Is that her name?

"Tell me," he murmurs. "What are you afraid of?"

He would guess Death.

She answers.

"Failure."

His eyes are alive. She sees a girl reflected in them.

She wonders who it is.

x-x-x

Through him, she has faced her fear.

With him, she will face her fear again

and again…

…and again…

…and again

as long as he doesn't run out of ink.

On the spine of the diary, the ink has run red.

Right down the middle is the key. A hint of the name she had forgotten.

He keeps the diary by his heart, with promises he will write everyday to tell her things.

She does not wish to know.

x-x-x

By the castle…

No memories…

…taint this place.

Review if you'd like!


End file.
